


fields

by catarinquar



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Cancer Arc, Depression, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Episode: s10e01 My Struggle, Pre-X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 08:33:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17721770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catarinquar/pseuds/catarinquar
Summary: He says "of course" and "anytime" as if it's effortless and easy; as if he has nothing better to do. One call and he’s there, yet his two-day stubble says didn’t shave for her. Dressed up just a little, though, and then waited outside to make sure she wouldn’t get to set foot in the house.The dichotomy of this Mulder puts her on edge in the middle of the empty fields stretching for miles in every direction.-pre-revival. marital msr angst & cancer angst.





	fields

**Author's Note:**

> in answer to a prompt from anon on tumblr (sequel/companion to [fever dreams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16265951))

Cough, roll over, turn on the light. It wouldn’t even warrant its own separate x-file. No new case report, only an addendum and a reminder to dot your i's, cross your t's, and to spot the blood-stained sheets.

It's been a year. Scratch that; it's been fifteen months, one week, and four days since she left. No reason in pretending she doesn't keep count. She knows Mulder has it marked in the old calendar stuck to the fridge because she saw it when she was there in winter. He called her on the date, breathing; not to promise her _I’m here, Scully_ , but rather to remind her _I'm right here where you left me, Scully_.

She also knows he doesn’t _keep track_ , not like her, not in the way where she knows it’s been _precisely_ that long -

And despite that - and despite knowing he can barely keep track of his meds or his laundry or his dirty dishes, let alone a sleep schedule - she calls him at half past two a.m. Like they used to, and not at all.

Cough, roll over, turn on the light. See the blood, wipe your lip. What’s new? Call your partner, because whatever else he is or has been, he never stopped being _that_.

Because - give him five minutes to remember the things he _has_ kept track of, and he’ll tell you down to the second for how long you got to be in remission.

-

When he doesn’t answer on the second ring, she hangs up. Scratches a last fleck of dried blood from her rubbed-raw philtrum, scratches down on tomorrow's to-do list: _wash & change bed sheets_.

-

He texts her in the morning just as she’s about to get in the elevator at the hospital.

 _Sorry I didn’t pick up last night, phone was turned off_. Which could mean that he’s getting his sleep, or that he’s making an effort towards it, or that his universe has truly been reduced to the office, the bathroom, and the kid who delivers groceries. Pizza, whichever. Another message ticks in: _You didn’t leave a message?_

This is the wonder of parsing textspeak and Mulderese combined: he’s not asking whether she did so much as he’s incredulous that she didn’t. What could be so important that she’d bother to call but drop it once it became more complicated than _it’s me, Mulder, listen here_ before hanging up with no goodbye?

Like they used to, then, and not at all. They’re still talking around each other and themselves, but their ellipsis has shifted and sent them out of orbit.

She texts back, _It was a mistake_. Maybe she was somnambulant, maybe she had a nightmare, maybe she felt horny for a hot second before coming to her senses. Cool and collected, with cold doctor's hands. Nimble fingers, too, but gravity does play favourites which is why the rest always seemed to weigh heavier: Dr. Scully, the Ice Queen, the Queen of the Dead, et cetera, et cetera. She remembers it all.

Well, maybe she had meant to call another man, but let Mulder make of it what he will.

-

Unbridled panic will brittle your bones and that is unacceptable when patients’ lives hinge on your steady surgeon's hands. She’ll fold them against the shaking, but there’s that orange-tinted bottle in her bag that tempts with an easier salvation, offering the kind of loose rosary beads that were always more suitable for low-lit hallways like these, anyway.

She needs to go get her prescription refilled, too, but that’s fine, it’s fine. She’s half an hour late already, been hiding in the basement for a while now -

She needs to schedule an appointment.

-

How many has she had, and is that more than usual? Have they been worse, is there anything different about them? She spends an hour-long patient care conference worrying about headaches before she worries herself into one.

After, she escapes to the locker room like a high schooler, intending to fix the concealer she’s rubbed from her upper lip, checking, checking, checking.

She glances under stall doors, paces from one end of the bench to the other. How often wouldn't they all do this at thirteen: feel that tell-tale clench and drip, stuff their panties full of paper towels, and try not to cry while they waited for someone's sister to show up and save them. Pads, tampons, the whole kit, _there, sweetie, nothing to see. Now, stop crying or you'll just ruin it again_. A ritual for girls only.

Her son turned fourteen in spring. In autumn, her daughter would have -

So, the locker room. Cleaner mirrors, same wide-awake fluorescents. Women only. “God,” she huffs, because she's fifty-one and won't be needing a new Mirena after this one.

So, she's fifty-one and doesn't cry. She dots, dabs, smoothes, switches to the pencil. _Mirror, mirror on the wall_ -

_Who's dying?_

The lamp flickers, sympathetic to the chaos in the OR on the other side of the wall. Chaos or Mulder in his motel room on the other side of a wall, any wall; for so many years she could rely only on him, but she can't ask him for this. Can’t, won't, whatever it matters.

 _Physician, heal thyself_.

Dr. Scully traces her cupid’s bow, and there is nothing left to see.

-

Headaches are commonly caused by stress.

She’s pulling double shifts. Two of her patients are experiencing complications in their recovery. Her new assistant is young and in need of hand-holding, hasn’t yet understood about surgeons or doctors or pathologists or mothers who gave up their children - or about their hands: steady, cold, bloodied. Guilty.

If there’s a dull thudding behind her eyes over the following weeks, stress is all it is. If she jolts from sleep with the fading echoes of a nightmare screaming in her skull, stress is all it is. She squeezes an extra fifteen minutes into her gym sessions and makes a point of considering to call her therapist.

-

Sitting at the breakfast table, she watches poppy-red stains bloom through crumpled tissues before fading. They're wilting flowers, roses maybe, and Scully would shred them and read the petals except she never listened when Melissa wanted to teach her.

Either way, what could she hope to learn that she might tell him - _Mulder, I think I’m going to die_ \- ? That’d be more than she ever admitted to back then, but this time he picks up on the first ring and leaves her no time to reconsider. “It’s me,” is what she says.

“Scully?”

 _Yes, me. And you_ \- “Mulder,” because it has to go on one side or the other. Besides. _Besides_ , she misses saying it.

“Sure you aren't making a mistake again?” His voice is a low growl, but she will not give him the satisfaction of seeing her hurt, and in her silence he breathes. Must smell his own uncertainty: “I never texted you back.”

“It’s fine. Mulder, listen, I wanted to ask… how are you?”

Oh, it isn’t and she didn't, but “oh, peachy,” he sneers; bites and sinks his teeth in, and this time she has to choke back that whimper. Still he backs off, safe now that he's drawn blood - and if only he _knew_ \- “sorry. I'm doing alright. I take my meds with water, eat my veggies, and practice immaculate personal and domestic hygiene. No worries, doc.”

And it’s not as if it wasn’t always _psychologist, fix thyself_ with him, too. It’s just that it used to be a slapdash job of makeshift bandages for her to fix with surgical staples and those hands in his hair; on his body, later. Just that she’s an organ donor and her fucking heart would be his, only never in time -

It’s just that, now, he’s carving out his own space and she is the one left bleeding. “Are you sleeping well?”

“Sometimes. None of that is what you wanted to ask me, though, is it?”

She wants to ask him what date she was diagnosed, what date she was declared in remission, and how long it’s been. Down to the second. She wants to ask him if she’s going to die, and she wants to ask him to convince her she isn't - not because he believes she’s immortal, but because he’ll be her rational half and know that two nosebleeds do not -

“No,” she admits. “When I called you last time... I’d just woken up with a nosebleed. And I had another today. I've had headaches, but I don't know, that might have nothing to do with, well, with anything - I mean, maybe I’m just worrying too much and the stress makes, ah, makes -”

“I think you should get it checked out.” _Two nosebleeds do not have to mean anything_ , and neither do headaches. Mulder knows that because he's rational, and he knows she should get it checked out anyway because it's the rational thing to do. “Scully?”

The phone, her hand, her arm is shaking. Her voice - “yes?”

And his - kind, patient, but never leaving her space or time for second thoughts, third thoughts, afterthoughts - “Scully, what did you want to ask me?”

“I would like you with me.”

-

She could have tried explaining, or excusing. She could’ve tried it for either or the both of them - _I’d thought about calling Mom, I didn't want to worry her with nothing, I don't want to go alone_ \- but that wasn't what _he_ asked for.

Her ring is on the same chain as her cross, although whether that makes her love or her faith weaker, she doesn't know. They would always be the other's weakness, in sickness and in health.

The other thing, then, is that in the end she didn't ask him at all. _I would like_ might be a statement or a plea, but it is no question, and only ever a half-truth at most: she _needs_ him with her, to be rational for once or to play the childish flower-thief, petulant and apologetic. _I don't accept that_. If she had let him kiss her under those strange lights in Allentown, perhaps she could have let him take care of her, too, and -

And what, he would have been there - in sickness - to hold her hand while she died?

That never happened, and _need_ is a demand she couldn’t ever place on him, not after everything that _has_ happened.

-

Virginia is a different state.

 _Of course_. That’s what he’d said, no effort at all; of _course_ he’d go with her, though she’d have to pick him up because he can’t drive with the medication he’s currently on.

The driveway complains from the moment she turns down it, gravel clipping the undercarriage, and Mulder watches her from his perch on the front porch railing. Jumps down when she parks the car in front of the house. There will be no invitation to come inside, then, but she takes note of his easy bearing, the work he’s put into his body. Appreciates it, even, but if that wasn’t the _point_ he wouldn’t have worn a slim fit sweater in August.

“You trying to compensate for something?” He makes a point of climbing into the car, putting his whole body into the act and twisting all the way around to catch the seat belt. “Small Scully, big car?” She might have laughed if only it wasn’t him, them; and like this. Instead she turns back down the driveway. “Sorry. Hi.”

“Hi. Mulder…” she has more than half a heart to reach for him, but although he’s turned towards her, he is leaning ever so slightly away. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” _again_ , and he shrugs as if it really does mean nothing. “How are you doing?”

“I’ve got a constant headache, not too bad, just -”

“Scully.” Spoken so softly, the admonishment is not lost on her.

“I know. Well, I _don’t_ know, really, it’s…” oh, she can shrug, too. “How about you, how are you feeling?” She doesn’t know why she asks, or what the hell kind of answer she expects, but not -

“Worried.” _Worried_ , no hesitance.

 _Of course_ , effortless; _anytime_ , easy, as if he has nothing better to do. One call and he’s there, yet his two-day stubble says didn’t shave for her. Dressed up just a little, though, and then waited outside to make sure she wouldn’t get to set foot in the house. She likes to think she wouldn’t have either way, but he took her _no_ away from her before she even got a chance to say it.

The dichotomy of this Mulder puts her on edge in the middle of the empty fields stretching for miles in every direction.

-

Might be that doctors make the worst patients, but Scully had thought she’d gotten the hang of it during their ten-year tenure working out of the basement. Either way, she would claim Mulder was always the exception to that rule what with being an exceptionally bad patient; the new thing is that he’s an exemplary next-of-kin.

He sits guard in the extra chair just inside the door of whatever examination room they’re in, watches as people in blue scrubs and white coats draw her blood and shine a penlight down her throat. Dr. Edwards seems young, but she’s efficient; gently tilting Scully’s head this way and that to prod the lymph nodes in her neck. She takes note of the tiny raised scar.

“I take it this is the chip mentioned in your file?”

Scully meets Mulder’s eyes. “Yes. It is.”

Dr. Edwards makes a sound in acknowledgement, value-free, and proceeds to ask Scully routine questions about headaches and sleep habits. If Mulder has thoughts about those, he keeps them to himself.

Throughout the rudimentary neurological exam, that’s the only thing that unnerves her: it’s not that she’d prefer him to fuss, but she had, it would seem, expected him to.

-

Strictly professional connections and her medical history allowed her to go around official channels and come in for a first round of testing at GUH in two days, but an MRI can’t be rushed and the scanner is only available when it is.

They’ve been waiting in the cafeteria for five hours and are both running on their third paper-cup of what passes for coffee when Mulder lays his hand on the table, palm up.

She doesn’t mean to let him wait so long before she takes it, but then again - she doesn’t _mean_ to take it in the first place.

-

There’s a whip-poor-will somewhere in the trees behind the house, singing the sun away.

“Three days?”

Scully nods. “Up to five, depending. And then they might ask me to come in for a biopsy, depending.” Mulder already knows this, was sitting right there when Dr. Edwards said it.

He unfastens his seat belt. “You could come in. There’s leftovers from -”

“Mulder.”

“I’m not asking you for anything. I just want,” his voice cracks and he tries to cover it with a laugh, “want to take care of you.”

“Mulder,” she repeats, but with that slip-up she realises. There was never any dichotomy, at least not the one she’d thought. He’s been putting himself back together without her, and it’s not about whether he still wants to let her in: it’s about whether he can watch her leave again.

“Scul- _ly_. I just want to take care of you.”

 _Selfless bastard,_ she thinks. No, he isn’t asking her for a damn thing. “It would be too easy to just…”

“Get trapped?”

Yes, but not by him.

-

The house welcomes her like a stranger. It’s almost tidy, and in following Mulder’s example she toes her shoes off just inside the door before locking herself in the downstairs bathroom to snoop. Whatever she left here of soaps and tampons is gone.

There’s a new scent, too. Different from when she lived here, and different from the fever-stench of January. He airs out well; it’s something like summer-grass and - well-spiced food.

She’d thought _leftovers_ meant reheated takeout at best, but he brings in ice water and two steaming plates of vegetable biryani from the kitchen. They eat on the couch.

“My therapist’s grandmother’s traditional recipe,” he shrugs. “Said I needed a hobby.”

-

Virginia is a different state, and she has crossed a line to be here again, now.

She never meant to take his hand, and she never let Melissa teach her palm reading, either - yet she knows the curve of Mulder’s life line, knows where his heart line points. Knows the criss-crossed scars on the back of his hand from ripped-out IV-lines. And the shape of them - like Nazca lines, like a fixture for a ley line -

Criss-crossed flight lines and crop circles across every state, and so in a sense they’re right back where they started.

-

Her third-to-last thought is that he’s using a different brand of laundry detergent. Her second-to-last thought is that they can’t blame this on alcohol.

Her last thought - is that he will wake up alone.

**Author's Note:**

> say hi on [tumblr](https://catarinquar.tumblr.com)!


End file.
